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Who doesn’t love to unwind with a cocktail at the end of a long day? Babies. That’s who. I mean that literally, infants should not do that.

Hey everyone, Amy talking drinking with you on D News today. Recently, it was reported that a mother in Kenosha, Wisconsin had noticed her baby was acting a little funny after dinner one night. She went to the hospital and realized she had mixed her baby’s formula with 2oz of vodka instead of water. Local police said the infants blood alcohol concentration was 0.29%. To put that into perspective, that’s higher than a 200lb man’s BAC after 10 drinks. The good news is that the baby, according to reports, was expected to survive, though any long term effects were unclear. How did the infant survive?

We get intoxicated from alcohol because it’s metabolized by our bodies. It’s first absorbed in the stomach as it passes through, then moves on to the small intestine, where the bulk of the alcohol we ingest, about 80%, is absorbed through the intestinal walls into the bloodstream. Because alcohol is a poison, the body needs to filter that out and the filtration system is the liver. Enzymes break down the alcohol and rid it from the body. It’s a slower process than the rate we consume alcohol. On average the liver can process 1oz of liquor, which is about one standard drink every hour. If you drink more than this, your system becomes saturated and you end up drunk with alcohol in your blood and body tissues until your liver can metabolize it.

No two people are the same, which means no two livers will process alcohol the same way, of all the things affecting how individuals process alcohol, age is one thing that isn’t a factor. Your liver doesn’t develop between infant-hood and your 21st birthday, such that you can suddenly drink safely. What really happens in these 21 years is that you get bigger. Body weight and type are two things that drastically affect how your body processes alcohol. Some people are smaller than others and smaller people have less mass through which alcohol can defuse, so they end up with more alcohol in their bloodstreams and become intoxicated far more quickly.

Body composition also plays a role. Individuals with a lower percentage of body fat will end up with a lower blood alcohol level than those with a higher percentage of body fat. Gender plays a role too, the enzyme dehydrogenase that breaks in alcohol in the stomach is less prevalent in women than men, meaning more alcohol is absorbed through women’s small intestines, contributing to an overall high blood alcohol content. Add to that that women typically have higher body fat percentage than men, and the ladies are getting far drunker than the fellows. A woman my size can have less than one drink before reaching the legal limit to drive, that’s 0.08 BAC. Whereas a man my size could drink twice as much and be fine.

Of course there are other factors that affect how your body handles alcohol, including mood, hormone levels, medication, illness and mentality. If you go out wanting to get drunk, research shows that you could get drunk even on non alcoholic drinks. Ultimately size plays a huge part in alcohol consumption. Your liver can always process alcohol, your body will just be saturated by it if you’re small. Especially if you’re infant sized. A baby might survive getting drunk but there could be devastating long term affects.

From the moment they start to form, our brains continue to develop into the early 20s. At every stage alcohol is one of the worst things you can give a developing brain. The brain is less susceptible to alcohol after birth, but the circuits are still developing, meaning alcohol can disrupt that development. Alcohol, in a developing brain, can affect problem solving skills, concentration, mood and overall mental health. The longer you go without drinking any alcohol, the better it is for your brain. Almost no one does this, including pregnant women. A mother who drinks passes the alcohol to her baby in the womb, there the developing brains architecture can be severely stunted for alcohol exposure.

Is there a safe amount to drink? Tara has more on that story here.

When a pregnant woman drinks the alcohol passes through the placenta to the fetus and gets into your baby’s bloodstream. The problem is that babies metabolize alcohol way slower than adults do.

Knowing a little bit more about how alcohol affects brain development what do you guys think is the right drinking age. Let us know in the comments below and don’t forget to subscribe for more D News every day of the week.